Schism in the Church?

Every town and community in Spain has its Belén, its Christmas crib, whether grand or modest. These are often works of art and ingenuity, with their moving figures, waterwheels turning, water streaming, and every clever device you can imagine. The best of them are shown every year in exhibitions throughout the peninsula. Many places, like Pezuela de las Torres in the Community of Madrid, are famous for offering a richly colourful live crib scene with local people as the essential figures.

The essence of the Belén is to capture the life of the village, or pueblo, the simple working background into which the child Jesus was born. The shepherds, the farmworkers, the harvesters, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker, are all a part of this charming and detailed display, including the domestic animals which are so central to the village way of life. Along with the arrival of the Tres Reyes, the three kings, this simple representation of the event of Christmas, is probably what most survives of the original meaning of the festival in the popular culture.

Now Pope Benedict, in a moment of bizarre intellectual hair-splitting, has announced in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, that the homely myth of the stable, with the donkey or mule, and the ox, those emblematic presences which give colour and life to our carols, is without historical foundation. There was no donkey, he says, there were no oxen standing by.

At least, this one detail is what has reached the general public, arguably through media misrepresentation of the Pope's thesis, while it is clear that his text acknowledges the presence of the animals in the crib tradition.

Still, the grassroots protest in Spain against the reporting of the Pope's words, which figured prominently in the national news, had to be heard to be believed. For days, the topic dominated conversation in the street. Every bar, restaurant or public place with a tradition of mounting the crib, insisted with fervour that they would not change their ways in spite of the papal view. The universal response, with typical Spanish forthrightness, was, "Well, I'm blowed if  I'm taking the donkey away ..."

 The point of real interest here is the popular response to what might, in another age, have been shown more respect. On such minor disputes do great schisms feed. And I truly wonder where this will all end....

CJM, Spain, December 23, 2012

A song for the end of the world

What more fitting for the end of the world, than Leonard Cohen's exquisitely ambiguous Halleluyah:

"And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Halleluyah."

CJM
December 21, 2012

Tide on the swollen river

Swollen waters butt
the incoming tide, the race
whirls into black holes.

CJM
El Nervión, December 2012

King Abba: a review by Simon Robinson

Simon Robinson of www.transitionconsciousness.org has posted a generously favourable review of my philosophical fantasy King Abba which concludes:


"As well as a flowing plot that starts off as a gentle brook but gathers pace to rushing rapids, the chapters are littered with thought-provoking dialogue throughout. We are asked to consider what kind of reality we ourselves are living in ...

"The prose is poetic, never heavy, and the plot constructed to continually arouse one’s curiosity as to what will happen next in the adventure of the characters’ lives. It can certainly withstand very favourably next to Sophie’s World, while also being distinctly different in flavour, and I certainly hope it gains the recognition it strongly deserves."

See also the first (five-star) review on amazon.com which comments: "Well written and a great read, this kept me - and my 12 year old - hooked from beginning to end. It would be fabulous for a young adult or parent/teen book group choice."

The Blue Flower -- a sign of the times

I forgot to mention sooner that Resurgence magazine did an attractive presentation of my poem "The blue flower", in its· Issue 272 • May/June 2012, with a full page image of a blue Himalayan poppy.  (See below the poem posted for this year's International Poetry Day.)

Splendid though this was, it did not coincide with my own experience of the blue flower, which took place on my walk across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, hence, "the pilgrim's friend." The roadside plant which so delighted me on that walk was the common chicory with its sky-blue flower and its complex pattern of petals, so varied as almost to appear haphazard. And yet, with all that variety, as Brian Goodwin would have said, the plant "emerges" in its full identity and character.

Synchronicities being what they are, the poem was one of those which "arrive" in the mind, and I had no idea at that time about the Romantic symbolism of the blue flower, even less that the common chicory is cited as Novalis' inspiration for the dream experienced by his character Heinrich von Ofterdingen. All of this came to light afterwards. It may be said, then, that I only came to understand the poem fully some time after writing it.

There is now no doubt in my mind that the experience of the flower on my long walk on "the hard road", and its special meaning for me on that journey, were an echo of the Romantic tradition which we are, in our own times, meant to rediscover. Only some new assertion of our belonging with nature and our longing for beauty, can bring us back to our true humanity.

CJM, December 11, 2012

Cichorium intybus

This doesn't do justice to the radiant blue of the flower, but does show the complexity of the petal arrangement.

Henri Bortoft and "the dynamic way of seeing"

Those who have arrived at Henri Bortoft's new book, Taking Appearance Seriously, must accept the risk that after reading it, they will never "see" things quite the same ever again. The book is a challenge, arising from Goethean thought and so-called continental philosophy, to all our neuronally embedded habits and "attractors" -- to invoke Allan Combs' nice mapping of chaos theory on to psychology. For a start, once you have read the book, you will probably before too long, once the floodwaters have receded, want to read it again.

Floodwaters? Yes, water played a significant part in the emergence of Henri's thought and teaching. A key image lies in the phrase "upstream". He uses this notion vividly in his exposition of how to dissolve our clotted habits of thought in perceiving events and language, nearly all of which arise in our consciousness as if "downstream", that is, already formed, patterned, without doubt or challenge. His own vision of "upstream" thinking came upon him as he was about to give a course for which, he suddenly realised, he was totally unprepared. He was standing on a bridge over a stream, lost in dismal thought about what he was to do, looking down the flow of the river. Then he turned and faced towards the descending waters for a few moments and then, suddenly, in a flash of inspiration saw how different was the experience of looking "upstream" at the waters not yet arrived but already arriving. With this single insight, he realised he could explain the difference between perceiving events and language as they come to us, and accepting them as already givens.

With this beautiful philosophical insight, poetic in its force, we have a tool with which to begin to become aware of our own habits of thought, our own tame acceptance of language and concepts which we have perhaps never questioned, and our own lack of real  dialogue in communicating with others. These are all themes which I explore through the questing figure of young Prince Fion in my book King Abba. Fion starts from the problem in his mind, inspired by looking around him at the vast palace library, that, although we speak of "knowledge", we have no real idea of what it is or where it comes from. Surely it must have existed somewhere before it arrived in all these volumes, he says to himself.

 This is the starting point for a hugely important journey, one that beckons to all of us.


CJM, December 10, 2012

King Abba around the world

 Henri Bortoft's review of King Abba has been posted on a Facebook page dedicated to Bortoft enthusiasts by Simon Robinson, who is a consultant and lecturer in chaos and complexity theory, innovation, creativity and sustainability. He is a member of BCI (Biomimicry for Creative Innovation) and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. He is also editor of the web page http://transitionconsciousness.wordpress.com/about 

For the post of the review, see:

www.facebook.com/HenriBortoft

 Bortoft's ideas, his exposition of phenomenology and hermeneutics, and his interest in Goethe, were all fertile ground for my approach to the writing of King Abba. In particular, I was interested in creative ways of perception, the struggle against ossified mindset, and a direct path to knowledge through experiential and sensory involvement in what we observe. My original interest in this, of course, came from writing poetry which I see as a pure form of experience rendered beautiful. The haikus which accompany this blog, which I have called Homage to Water, all arise from this aesthetic principle. King Abba's aim is to help young people arrive at their own realisation that much of what they learn and inherit as knowledge has to be relearned through their own soul experience.

More on this to come.

 CJM, December 9, 2012

King Abba:a review by Henri Bortoft

I have read "King Abba" with much enjoyment. I think it is beautifully written, and therefore a joy to read, but also it kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next. ... It gradually begins to dawn on the reader just what a difference there is between the artificial environment which is ultimately a product of intellectual reason - but is mistaken for reality - and the genuine reality of the living world that we encounter through the life of the senses, and we cannot help but see this reflected in the way we are living/not living today. For this reason alone, apart from its sheer enjoyment value, I think it would be very good if this work were to be published today. So when can I have the next volume please?

Henri Bortoft author of The Wholeness of Nature and Taking Appearance Seriously (Floris Books).

Details of King Abba can be found here.

King Abba has arrived!

I have been very fortunate in my years as editor to work with exceptional and bright people dedicated to refashioning ideas in science and philosophy. We are going through a time of enormous change in our western culture, and the old paradigms no longer stand the test of time. Many of our accepted practices and beliefs have brought us, and our planet, to a place of extreme vulnerability and dire ugliness. Tragically, we have mostly been unaware of the damage we have been causing, and those voices that called for change were mostly ignored. Governments and institutions that should have been protectors of society and landscape, have played into the hands of commerce and short term profiteering.

Against this background, I wrote King Abba, a philosophical fantasy for young people, equally for any thoughtful person unhappy with current values and practices in science, technology, economics and government. My aim was to open up questions which are not often asked in our educational system, and introduce doubts and queries where we take so much for granted as if there were no other way of seeing things. As so much of what we accept is actually absurd, there is a comic element in the book, too. It can be seen as a satire of our times and our present society. The book is written as an adventure story, but stops now and then (more than conventional publishers would like) to ask questions.

King Abba is now published as an e-book, and details can be found here.